


We Can't Change The Places Where We Were Born

by Duck_Life



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Mad Max: Fury Road, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 07:30:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4910611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some quiet moments between Cheedo and the Dag leading up to the birth of the Dag's child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Can't Change The Places Where We Were Born

“I’ve decided I’m going to name her Splendid,” says the Dag one day, hand on her swollen belly. The seeds in the greenhouse beds have just begun to sprout, tiny sprigs of green shooting up through the dirt.

“What if it’s a boy?” Cheedo says from her spot leaning against the wall, watching her tend to the plants. She’s been absently twisting her hair into tiny braids along the right side of her head for half an hour now.

“It’s not a boy.” She says it abruptly, with finality, and so Cheedo drops the subject.

They finish watering the plants together and then climb into bed for the night, Cheedo as always offering her extra pillow to put beneath the Dag’s back, the Dag turning it down as always.

The sun rises, but the two of them awake long before that when the baby starts kicking.

“She’ll be strong,” Furiosa says at breakfast, agreeing with the expectant mother that her child is certainly female. All the girls have had a chance now to feel the baby’s quick and furious movements. “Just like her mother.”

Cheedo finds the Dag hunched over in a corridor later, sweating with her arms wrapped around her stomach like she’s trying to disappear into the wall. She swats away suggestions to go see a healer. “I’m fine,” she insists through clenched teeth. “Cheedo, I’m fine.”

And that night, in her ritual decline of Cheedo’s pillow, she admits amidst the kisses she presses to the back of Cheedo’s neck, “I’m not fine.” She says, “It hurts.” She says, “Please don’t tell anyone, Cheedo.”

Because Cheedo is the fragile one, and the Dag for all her frailty is strong, and sturdy, and does not waver or whimper in the face of pain.

“Okay,” says Cheedo as they drift to sleep entangled.

Cheedo reads all the time. All of Miss Giddy’s books have been left here to collect dust, so she rescues them and reads them, sometimes late into the night. Often the Dag has to put her to bed after she’s fallen asleep learning about defunct governments, old almanacs, astronomy, the tendrils of her hair fanning out across the cracked pages.

And when the Dag’s gasping with what she assures Cheedo is false labor, they stay up all night, the Dag clutching her hand erratically, Cheedo reading aloud from a collection of Shakespeare’s works, making up different voices for each different character.

“Do you want to leave?” the Dag asks her that morning, and her voice is so, so quiet.

Cheedo blinks. “No, I- I’m fine to stay. Unless… I could go get some food and bring it back here?”

“No,” the Dag says, and she is _not_ going to cry, she is going to be strong and sturdy, she will not waver. “I mean… it might be for the best if you and I… stopped being us.”

In the silence, Cheedo feels like she can hear her own heart thumping in her chest. “ _No_ ,” she says, but it sounds ridiculously childish to her own hears. “I mean… Dag, I love you.”

“You’re a kid.”

“I am _one year_ younger than you,” Cheedo says, and this time she sounds childish too but petulant, angry.

“Well, I’m just a kid too,” the Dag says, but she’s never been a kid, not really. “But I’m _having_ one now. I have to grow up. You don’t. You _shouldn’t_ , Cheedo.” Her fine hair sticks to the sweat of her forehead. She’s never looked so beautiful. She’s never looked so sad. “You can go away. It won’t make you a bad person.”

“I know that,” Cheedo assures her, hands shaking. “But… I don’t _want_ to. I’m not staying so I can be a good person. I’m staying because… just because I want to.” The book remains open and untouched in her lap, Romeo and Juliet and all their problems. Dull read, they’ve both agreed, but Cheedo thought for a moment it might be putting the Dag to sleep, which was good. “I love you,” she says again, such big words for such a small person, “and I want to stay with you, and I want to raise your daughter with you. My choice.”

The Dag pulls her down and kisses her, and she tastes like strawberries and tears. “Our daughter,” she whispers in the space between their lips. “She’ll be our daughter.”

Cheedo nods. “A daughter with many mothers.”

It’s springtime. The baby’s a boy.

They name him Angharad. 


End file.
